“You are the butterfly and you are gone.”
They arrived:
White crowned, Golden-crowned sparrows—
Winter’s mark
December in the park—
river so high, air so chill
my inner thighs freeze
Could barely see them
standing in the cornfield
a hundred sandhill cranes
“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.”
“Words are alive — cut them and they bleed.”
“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”
“Poetry is sort of a homecoming.”
“I think poetry must stay open all night in beautiful cellars.”
“A poet must achieve a balance between solitude and solidarity, between feeling
and action, between intimacy of mankind and the revelation of nature.”
“Poetry is from the frontiers of consciousness.”
“Poetry is the eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.”
“Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth:
the true poet is near the oracle.”
“Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.”
“Poetry is a lion because it eats and intensifies natural speech.”
“The Kings who have died one by one are now reborn in poet’s hearts.”
“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
“Wine is bottled poetry.”
“All night wild impulses
The only way to find a path
is to set fire to your life.”
“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.”
“You are the butterfly and you are gone.”
“You are the butterfly and you are gone.”
A poet and writer of the natural world, Terri Glass mentored under William Stafford and Robert Bly.